Birdsong

This started off a happy little thing about the joy of birdsong. However (and there always seems to be an "however" with Greville and the Tombstones) it developed into a treatise on something which is altogether of the weirder songbird.

This is... Birdsong

Graveyard under moonlight.
Grass blades form of twilight.

Dark winds whistling a sweet song to it.

 It’s where you want to be all along.

To feel you can belong.

 Life is in tune everywhere.

Wings cut through deadened air.

Evening rains dappling down on stone.

Private carriage, you’re all alone.

All you seem is all you’ve known.

Then the needle looped at the vinyl’s end.

Scratched out beat sounded so final that you cried.

I offered up kind words of my own,

but you placed them all down and replied: 

“I hope there is a B-side”

You know of a wild, star bush.

 In the middle is it’s seeded fruit.

Times you crack it open,

put your frail hand in,

Grazes your skin, every thorn sings.

You’re reminded of the sting.

 Masquerade night sky ball.

Silently waltz in the grand old hall,

Deities wear baroque masks to fool all

behind them they can hide ridicule.

You need to be a fool.

Then planets fell off their springs. 

I didn’t know what was happening, I cried.

You whispered “Life is not only being alive,

it’s seeing its terror and not being terrified”

Well I hope I didn’t waste this ticket

on a free ride.

How did I miss her birdsong has died? 

No celestial bodies to hold, flowers fell by my side:

 “The birdsong is long gone”, you sighed,

And that’s the sound I realised:

 She stopped singing to peck the flesh

from my goodbye.